I don’t need to read it again. Your understanding of “way of life” is inaccurate. Most Southerners went right back to their old lives as sharecroppers. They were still poor, but many Freedmen lives drastically improved and they could buy land for themselves. The rich had to cut down on their profit margins, but most would remain in control of their lucrative farmland.

The biggest hit to Southern economies was the Civil War and Reconstruction. But if ag in the South wasn’t prosperous for the past 150+ years, it would likely have not continued or exist to this day. (We subsidize them now, and they are much more efficiently run, but it hasn’t always been that way).

Corporations and greedy execs are still pulling that BS today. “We can’t afford to raise wages because we will go broke.” Yet most still continue to turn profits. If you can’t afford to pay your employees a decent/living wage, you can’t afford to be in business.

I also don’t think the US was 50/50 good/evil. Most white southerners were racist, yes. But it’s the politicians and plantation owners that forced us into a war.